Writing for reliably left-wing The Nation, Joan Walsh rhetorically asks "Can the Democrats Win Back White Working-Class Voters?" Her answer is yes, with difficulty.
My answer to her question is that doing so would be as difficult as the GOP winning back black voters, whose votes they once monopolized. Big tent politics become strained when the tent tries to cover groups with competing claims on scarce resources.
The Democrats have become the party of racial and sexual minorities and what Joel Kotkin calls "the clerisy" - virtue-signalling wealthy and upper-middle class whites. Meanwhile the GOP has become the party of what was once described as "typical Americans" - married, church-going, employed in the private sector, whites, who feel no guilt about their accomplishments and no need to share them with the unmotivated and the self-destructive.
The zero-sum nature of this game has become apparent to all. Their interests conflict; getting them to "carpool together" politically won't be easy, maybe impossible.
